A DYING RACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

A DYING RACE.

THK PATAGOXIANS.

Xormat.lt the Tehuelehes, as the Patagonian Indians are called, are a peaceable and kindly people, vet they are impulsive, capable of strong prejudices, very revengeful, and—often with good reasonsuspicious of strangers. They are not to bo trifled with, and when under the influence of drink are brutal and dangerous. They show love for their children and wives and kindness to their old people. They are divided into numerous tribes or groups, each having its chief, or cacique, upon .whom the burdens of government rest but lightly. The cacique of the tribe, to whom this village belonged was then at another camp. They believe in a good and an evil spirit, whom they propitiate. and have many stories, myths and superstitions connected with the sun, moon, and stars; while the flaying of horses and drinking the blood form ■ a conspicuous part in their superstitions, birth, marrp age, and death ceremonies, many of which are repulsive. When Magellan first passed through the Strait, eays Charles W. Furlong in Harper's Magazine, there were perhaps no fewer than ten thousand Putagonians roaming from the Rio Negro to the Strait, while to-day, driven back from the littoral to the high pampas and the .foothills of the-Andes, altogether they would probably not total over 500. - ■

In prc-eqtiine days, terminating with the Spanish invasion, these sons of the pampas lived a much more athletic existence; lor today the Tchuelche, like the gaucho, Mill not walk a hundred yards if his horse is close at hand, and it usually is. To the horse is probably due the disappearance of the sling and the bow and arrow, as well as the more prevalent use of that unique and characteristic weapon of the pampas, the boleadores. or boras. This consists of two or three liawhidecovered balls, connected by rawhide, to be swung around the head, and hurled from the saddle by one of the balls, slightly eggshaped, called the manlita, or hand-ball, with the result that the quarry is entangled around the legs, and incidentally struck and pounded by the halls themselves. The nioro primitive bolas were round stones, to which rawhide guanaco thongs Mere attached in a groove. Later these were covered with rawhide for horses, and the linest doubled, and now many bola leathers are filled with shot or iron.

Three-balled bolas are used for horses, while two balls serve for ostrich and sometimes guanaco. which are bolaed about the neck. A single ball, called the bola perdida (lost, ball) with an attached string, used as a hurling stone, was undoubtedly the most primitive form for this formidable weapon. Horses are never bolaed by a man on foot,' for the obvious reason that they must be taught not to fear a man coming thus, this precaution enabling a lone dismounted man to approach his horse.